Chapter 25, Kant Summary

Hilde gets a birthday call from her father, Major Knag. Hilde says she feels sorry for Sophie and what the Major has done to her in the book. Hilde insists that the characters Sophie and Alberto really exist. Back in the story, Alberto now discusses the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who lives from 1724 to 1804. Kant is concerned with what people can know about the world, through either reason or sense perception. Kant leans toward the empiricist side of philosophy but also looks closely at what our reason can say about such things as time and space. Kant calls time and space and its measurement a key part of man's sense perceptions.

Kant goes on to state that, unlike Hume, he believes that cause and effect are not simply there by force of habit. The human mind determines cause and effect, and this...